Salome: Canto One

Most people are too sheepish about being seen undressed.
We seem less human thus, with all our animal hair
Revealed for all to see.
Now women as a sex especially will feel oppressed
If they are made to drop their dresses, in their bare
Assailability.

Girls as erotic dancers happily display their skin,
Since they can dip their fingers greedily into
Their watchers' pocket cash.
Their mercenary nudism yet stays safely within
The bounds of public decency. They will not do
What's sexually rash.

The ecdysiast who has Salome's soul in her does not
Undress with motives solely of foul avarice:
She has a subtler plan;
This nude philosopher has a much more daemonic plot.
The reason for her exhibitionism's this:
She wants to snare a man.

To trap a man, her body will imply all willing lewdness
As she is swaying in her feline, sinuous dance
With no cranny concealed.
She proudly will parade her frame in all its brutish crudeness
And give her future lover an inviting glance,
Suggesting she will yield.

Salome chose a pretty blonde to be her avatar,
And Herod's essence entered a mature man's form
One night some years ago.
He saw her all in nature's garb in a dark, squalid bar.
She looked back at his roving eyes with a smile so warm:
She was willing all to show.

This Venus seemed to come out of a sea of lubricity.
She was so fair and fresh, with locks of curly gold,
Short, svelte, and so petite.
With a graceful gait, she went to him and sensed his fantasy:
A giggling ingenue, yet as a dancer bold
With ballerina feet.

She shed her denim shorts and shirt, her torso to reveal.
Unclipping her baroque brassiere, she freed her bust.
Her lissom hips would swerve
As she slipped out of dainty panties and each spiked high heel.
She pursed her lips, looked in his eyes to nourish his lust
And gave him every curve.

She poked her gentle breasts into his face and softly sighed,
Then sat upon his pointy lap, and sitting there,
She was an architect.
She showed the flower in her hair, the petals opened wide.
Yet of all these arousing teasings, none would compare--
None has such an effect--

As when she showed the sensuous lips that sat between her cheeks:
Lovely and puckered, like those of an African princess--
So eager to be kissed!
Yet, it's the kind of mouth that scatologically speaks,
All foul; still, pleasurably fair was this dark egress--
For filth it did exist.

Those dirty lips purred bawdiness in order to inflame
His passion. It's striking how women's basest parts--
(In themselves coarse and crude)
If owned by girls with Trojan Helen's callipygian frame--
Now glow with comeliness, will speed men's beating hearts
And make their thoughts all lewd.

Such Helen-like perfection did this girl so fully mirror,
And her risque communications contra-posed
Her so pristine veneer.
Her girlish, simple soul persona only drew him nearer;
For dainty girls seem prettier when they're exposed
To vice, where lechers veer.

They went into a private room where now his hands could roam
The landscape of her body. His spry fingers hiked
All over her round hills,
Her valleys and her caves; now, these dark places were the home
Of all the sweet sensations that Salome liked--
The theatre of her thrills.

One of his fingers, in her garden, was a botanist:
Her bud it studied there, among the grass, that night;
Sweet dew bedecked the place.
The bud did bloom into a lily, longing to be kissed.
Her tongue, a brush, inside his ear did "Thank you" write:
Saliva daubed the space.

Another finger, how like a masseur, would gently rub
Against those wrinkled lips, so black and like a raisin
Between her soft, pink cheeks.
So mesmerizing were those lips (in which he still did grub,
Caressing those smooth, ruddy cheeks) that he would gaze
With sheepish, furtive peeks!

Was she indignant as he studied her anatomy?
Most women won't indulge men who would scrutinize
Their darker, nether parts.
Such men like women's bosoms and especially those three
Hot orifices, but not what men ought to prize:
Women's kind, loving hearts.

Nevertheless, Salome, all too willing to indulge
All his lascivious exploring, used her charm
To lure him further in.
Enthusiastically, indeed, Salome would divulge
Each secret place of hers to him, for this would harm
Herod with deeper sin.

It seemed as though each of Salome's baser regions had
Its own intelligence: her breasts were like two nurses;
The flower in her hair
Was as a doorman; her black lips, a ribald poet, glad
To let out filthy expressions in her lurid verses--
Thus would she Herod snare.

Salome also was content to let him think that there
Was little business going on inside her head:
Her upturned rump possessed
More intellect? She'd have him think under her animal hair,
That she had greater wisdom glowing in her spread:
Her brains were not so blessed?

Thus Herod never would suspect that she had dark designs,
To drag him down below his moral faculty,
And make of him her slave.
Gymnosophists like her, antitheses to all the Jains,
Preach spiritual degradation, lechery--
Men's souls thus to deprave.

Her nurse-like bosom, porter flower and bawd-bard lips conspired
To make him focus also on his flaming members,
Forget he had a mind,
A wife and family, and let himself in lust be mired.
Those three intelligences fanned his cooling embers
When he at all declined

To keep on asking her for more, as when his wallet thinned.
He fumbled through his last few dollars, as she used
Her finger, as a pen,
To write, "Stay," on his rising lap! For if he no more sinned,
Her scheme would fail; and thus, she kept his loins amused
With fingers--her tickling ten.

They left the private room, and then went back to their first table,
For now poor Herod could afford only to see,
And not to feel, her skin.
To keep him in her thrall, she had to show that she was able
Not only to arouse him with her nudity,
Like prostitutes with thin

Ability to titillate: she had to hex his mind.
When he told her that he had a religious bent,
She told him she'd found God.
She said that Christ had helped her leave the sinful world behind,
And every Sunday she to church devoutly went.
He did find it quite odd

That such an exhibitionist could reconcile herself,
Shamelessly naked, to the Church's moral rigour.
She seemed to have no qualms
About provoking lust; meanwhile, her Bible, on a shelf,
Unread, condemns the generous sharing of her figure
With men, like giving alms

To sex-starved derelicts, a carnal largesse quite unfitting.
Yet she decried the Catholics' prayer to Mary with
True Protestant aplomb.
She did espouse these inconsistent ethics all while sitting
On his alert lap, and would carry herself with
An enigmatic calm

Appearing to defy suspicions of hypocrisy.
For if she had a man, she said, she'd retire forever
From dancing in the nude,
And tearfully repent of her lucrative iniquity.
She disrobed only to survive, not being clever:
With these words, she him wooed.

After she said that, a strategic tear ran down her cheek.
His eye caught this, and then his gentle heart did melt
With gullible sympathy.
For of all of the womanly arts, none can make men so weak
As female weeping. With this, men have ever felt
Some of girls' misery,

And found themselves all bound with soft compassion's servitude.
Salome knew this all too well, and just to keep
Him firm within her grip,
She used her charms to bring ham back in a salacious mood,
She roused the beast beneath his belt from its short sleep
And then began to slip

Out of her scant attire, exposing all her pinkish skin.
The bedside manner of her breasts would nurse his lust
While the doorman of the flower
Within her hair opened the petals, welcoming him in.
She, bending over, brought her cheeks and black lips just
Near enough to have the power

To hypnotize him with her dark lips' filthy poetry.
Her watchful eyes did study his, observing how
His rapt face would respond
To how the poet in those black lips cooed obscenity.
Those three intelligences pleased him even now,
For on them he still fawned

As if to make those bosom nurses cushion him some more.
He flattered the black lyricist to make her kiss
Him with more dirty lines.
He thanked the porter graciously for opening the door,
Hoping one day to be allowed to enter this
Hotel where pleasure dines.

She thanked him with a high-pitched giggle for his blandishments.
Her body quivered with delight from contemplating
Her mesmeric success.
This was cut short when he discovered he had just six cents
Left in his wallet. He said he would keep her waiting
For ten minutes, or less

As he looked for a cash machine. Fearing he wouldn't return,
She said that she was next to go up on the stage
And dance nude in the light.
For three songs' length, and not a penny, she would make him yearn
To have her, for her nakedness would him engage,
Being such a flawless sight.

He therefore chose to stay and watch her dance her lewd burlesque.
This pirouetting ballerina, whose obscenePlies debauched all dancing,
Would flit about and spin only to flaunt her statuesque
Physique. This nude Terpsichore did so demean
Her art form that mere prancing

Might have more dignity and yet, she did it with such grace
As to elevate strip-tease to where it could be deemed,
Almost, a serious art.
Her median between high culture and all that is base
Transfigured her in Herod's eyes, so that she seemed
To have an aesthete's heart.

Such is the foolish thinking of a man whose mind is dulled
By hungry lechery: above his shoulders, sleeping;
Below his waist, awake.
He, by Salome's nude allures, was into a torpor lulled.
Her pendulum-like hips hypnotized him, him keeping
In a trance. His heart did shake

To see her bare, and balanced on her ballerina toes:
Quintets of tasty grapes on each foot, to his eyes--
Ripe for a lover's chewing.
The girl's smooth, milky legs bent into a plie to expose
The garden under her Venus' mount between her thighs,
For lechers' pleasant viewing.

Then, on all fours, she crawled up close to him to tempt him more.
Her sweet and creamy breasts embraced his grateful head,
Her raspberry-like teats
Tickling his lips. Twirling his finger, he wanted the whore
To turn around. She did, showing a sugary spread:
Two mouth-watering, fudge treats!

With eyes demure, she then observed the way he contemplated
Those pursed black lips between her cheeks: did they still please?
Looking back at him, she
Had to be sure. As fate would have it, he was still fascinated
With their dark sensuality. She still could tease
Him with scatology.

After her show, he raced off, searching for a cash machine.
He would be back, she knew, for she saw in his eyes
The want of satisfaction.
She knew she'd snared him, for when he returned, he'd only been
Gone fifteen minutes. With cash, he could claim his prize,
This dangerous attraction.

She went to him with her hips swaying, like a hypnotist's
Gold watch, which lulls the viewer into a deep trance,
His conscious mind knocked out.
To rid Herod thus of his reason was the gymnosophist's
Intention: now she easily could do her dance
And toss his will about

As if it were a ball for her to play with as she would,
In her control, not his. Herod's resistance fell
Off, as her clothing did,
Each piece by peeling piece. Seeing a man turn from all good
And sink inside a mire of evil, down to Hell,
To suffer there amid

Souls more deserving of infernal torment (for this man
Before was a devoted husband and a father)
Had been Salome's goal.
For she despised the spirit, and did all a devil can
To thwart religious aspiration: grace did bother
Her so corrupting soul.

For her world was as upside-down as when she did bend over.
Vice was her virtue; lust, her love; and flesh was better
Than man's immortal soul.
Why call such thoughts illogical, if our Lord did send over
His Son to die to give life to each guilty debtor--
By His wounds, we're made whole?

She reasoned: How can life be saved by death? This paradox
Is by the Church accepted as eternal truth;
Therefore, her contradictions
Could also have validity. The stripper, thus, who walks
Nude on a stage gives sermons to each lustful youth
And not demonic fictions.

The fleshly life is to be celebrated, not despised.
This hedonistic wisdom she would share with him,
Make him forget his wife,
His children, and his home--which he had hitherto so prized--
And have a wild affair with her, all on a whim.
She'd transform his dull life

Of leaden duties to his family to one debauched,
Of rakish irresponsibility, and of sex.
Salome justified
Her plans for Herod in this way; and therefore, as he watched
Her swaying nakedness, she daubed his cheeks with pecks
Of red lipstick, and sighed

Inside his ear, "Take me to bed tonight." This made him start;
And he reminded her politely of his wife
And children, home in bed.
Though Herod ruled this man's loins, John the Baptist had his heart.
Salome'd have that part of him under the knife.
She'd make him lose his head,

And make of him a soulless stallion. Thus, he'd be her slave.
With no will of his own, he would serve only hers.
Salome would persist
With her seducing and caressing. She would make him crave
Her skin exclusively. He'd only hear her purrs.
His wife would not be missed.

And so, at last, he did agree to go with her that night
To her apartment, where they made love without rest,
And without inhibitions.
Salome's carnal trinity continued to excite
The bestial side of him: and so, each nurse-like breast
Nurtured lewd dispositions;

The doorman to the "Flower Hotel" did welcome him politely,
And he strode in most eagerly; then those black lips
Were open to receive
Reviews of her lascivious verses, which he didn't slightly
Regard, but deeply analyzed, and praised. Her hips
Would, to the rhythm, heave.

Now this went on all through the night; and then, Herod did get
A phone call from his wife, demanding to know why
He wasn't home in bed.
The cellphone trembled in his hand: Salome didn't let
Him speak in private. His wife could hear Salome sigh,
And moan, and kiss his head.

He hung up after hearing an uncomfortable quiet
On the other end. He threw his clothes on, cursed his lover
And ran out of her place.
He jumped into his car, raced down the road, and with a riot
Of ideas, tried to think of what to say to cover
This guilt he couldn't erase.

Convincing lies don't easily come in these situations,
And he walked in a lonely house, with his wife's note
Saying their marriage was dead.
Salome gloated, noting the success of her machinations:
She turned a loving family man into a goat,
And made him lose his head.